The universe has a natural limit on the speed of light…but what if it does the same for the speed of thought?

At the beginning of each month, the Tor.com eBook Club gives away a free sci-fi/fantasy ebook to club subscribers. We’re happy to announce that the pick for May 2017 is Vernor Vinge’s now-classic space opera A Fire Upon The Deep!

A Fire Upon the Deep is a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.

Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind’s potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these “regions of thought,” but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.